Here's What to Expect at the One and Only Museum of Ice Cream in New York City

It's sprinkles, ice cream, and chocolate galore at this beautifully curated sugar heaven in the Meatpacking District

Museum of Ice Cream

If you're a lover of all things colorful, delicious, and fabulous, this is the place for you!

Honestly, I’m surprised no one in New York City — home of all the absurd fashion trends, too-cool-for-school crowds, and every hyper-photogenic culinary marvel around — thought of a Museum of Ice Cream sooner. I was ecstatic about The Daily Meal’s invite to check out the museum, considering every single one of the 30,000 tickets sold out in five days.

Chelsea Davis

The Museum of Ice Cream, a month-long pop-up in The Whitney in the Meatpacking District, is every sugar fiend’s dream. It’s no surprise that the exhibit dedicated to the wonderful world of everyone’s favorite summertime dessert is as visually appetizing as it is actually a delicious experience.

Chelsea Davis

If you’re planning on visiting, make sure you’re ready for the camera because besides being one of the coolest (pun intended) experiences you’ll have this summer, it’s also obviously a treasure trove of Instagrammable moments. Here’s what beautifully imaginative sweet treats you can expect.

Within the first few steps into the museum, you’re welcomed with a bowl of creamy, indulgent ice cream, with flavors exclusively curated for the museum by places like Odd Fellows, Chinatown Ice Cream Factory, and Black Tap, to name just a few of the ice cream masterminds.

Further into the world’s cutest museum, you’re presented with oddly shaped, homemade, edible balloons made of a sticky sugary mix… that are filled with helium! Obviously, I had to try one. I sounded like a sugar-stuffed, delirious chipmunk.

Chelsea Davis

Each exhibit is interactive, essentially immersing you in ice cream heaven. And it being a museum, the pastel colored walls are covered in the delightful history of ice cream. Who knew George Washington was so obsessed that he spent more than $200 in one summer (the equivalent of $5,000 today) on ice cream?

You can also take part in helping to create the “The World’s Largest Ice Cream Sundae” by slam dunkin’ a scoop of never-melting “ice cream” in to a big gold bowl. One of these fine scoops is mine.

There’s a Willy Wonka-esque Chocolate Chamber room that literally smells like pure chocolate, complete with a chocolate fountain, a big “chocolate” bean bag chair for lounging, psychedelic chocolate swirl projections, all while you listen to the Willy Wonka theme song playing in the background.

Chelsea Davis

There’s this cool waffle cone light installation.

Chelsea Davis

And, of course, there’s the main event, the one and only life-sized pool filled with 11,000 pounds of rainbow sprinkles. It’s beautiful. That said, they get everywhere. Seriously. Between the toes, in the undies, in your hair… The pool’s sprinkles, however, aren’t edible. But they do make for the ultimate photoshoot. It’s a thing of pure magic. The fact that the wall is lined with jars of Dylan’s candy just makes it that much sweeter.

Chelsea Davis

There are walls of bright ice cream-themed art work, the kind of stuff I would totally decorate my room with. This room also gives you a “Willy Wonka” moment of woah. Pop a miracle berry candy (which temporarily allows you to taste sour things as sweet) and enjoy a pink ice cream cone topped with juicy lemon slices that now taste like sweet lemonade.

Chelsea Davis

Finally, you arrive at the Tinder-sponsored room where you can yet again have a little photoshoot with the ice cream sandwich swing, the sprinkles “selfie wall,” and an ice cream scoop seesaw.